


Lady Fate's Fool

by Deannie



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 07:41:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/884720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>God, he’d been played, hadn’t he? Played by fate—that most fickle of all lovers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lady Fate's Fool

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during "Serpents".

Ezra’s eyes drifted again to the satchel and he forced them back to the window. Again. He had to get ready. Vin was on one of the roofs above, waiting for Stutz to show himself. Ezra should be keeping a lookout from here. It was what they had wanted him to do, though he couldn’t shake the idea that Chris didn’t quite expect it of him.

What they wanted. He almost laughed. They thought… they thought they couldn’t trust him because he was a confidence man, a scammer. What they didn’t realize was that the job of a con man is to give the marks exactly what they want. Not what they actually need or desire in their deepest hearts, but what they _think_ they want—whether they know they’re thinking it or not.

From the beginning, Chris Larabee wanted one man he wouldn’t have to care about. Ezra had sized him up quite quickly during that trip to the Seminole village. Chris and Buck had a history and friendship already established. Chris and Vin had… whatever it was they had, but it was strong and intense and unyielding. Nathan was the one Chris had cared enough to fight for when he’d no idea who the man was, and compulsion like that wed a man to your soul in ways you couldn’t reject. Josiah? Perhaps there at the beginning, Josiah meant as little as Ezra himself had. But there was a glimmer in Chris’s eyes when he looked at Josiah, of a little boy sent to church and taught to fear or respect or love the Word. He’d care if something happened to the preacher.

At the time, Ezra had had no idea what demons drove Chris Larabee. Truth be told, he hadn’t cared. He knew the man didn’t _want_ to care—which meant he wanted an outlet not to.

Enter one son of a bitch gambler with no moral scruples, ripe for the berating and hating and disregarding—except when he was useful. And at the time, he’d thought useful would get him to the village, to the mine, and to the gold that would make him rich.

The satchel of money was there again. Ten thousand dollars…

His rifle clicked on the rounds, ready to fire, and he set it to the side of the window. Hopewell was surrounded at the moment, Buck keeping a close eye on the beautiful Louisa, and therefore on the governor himself.

Ezra knew he’d done well the last year and a half, making himself comfortably into what each of the other six wanted. It was his job, his life’s work, and he was astonishingly good at it. Able to insinuate himself so completely into this group of men that now, even when they _knew_ he couldn’t be trusted, they _wanted_ him to be there.

JD wanted one person who wouldn’t see him as a child, who would allow him to make his decisions and back him. Buck wanted someone to share the burden of his relentless comic relief, who understood that black souls lasted longer with the occasional application of the joker’s balm. Josiah wanted a soul more tortured than his own, who understood the pain of never being as much or as good or as whatever one’s parent wanted one to be. Vin wanted a brother who wouldn’t expect anything of him, who didn’t require him to be anything but a stalwart sibling ever standing by his side.

Vin was out there now, watching, making sure Stutz wouldn’t get his way. Wouldn’t earn his money. That money that sat on Ezra’s bed, glaring at him in condemnation. In entreaty. The apple…

Nathan… Nathan wanted too many things from Ezra, he sometimes thought. But it was the nature of their shared heritage. He wanted Ezra to be the spoiled Southern white man, to scorn when necessary, his gambling and lack of morals simply convenient surfaces to catch the barbs. Nathan wanted to think the worst of Ezra first. It was a habit, and a comforting one. At times, though, he wanted Ezra to provide a proof that all white men from that tattered confederacy weren’t alike, that his first impressions were wrong. It was a job Ezra never seemed to do well. Even in his best attempts—attempts that found even Chris proud of him for at least a moment—Nathan would try to find fault, or downplay the reality of it altogether.

But there were times when Nathan looked on him with pride, rare though they were. And those were the times when Ezra thought he might have learned something in this dusty place. His initial thoughts for Nathan were not kind, to say the least. Some of it was the high and mighty way in which the black man bore himself, and sadly, some of it was the fact that a black man had such high and mighty ways at all. “One of those negroes putting on airs,” as his mother’s brother would have said.

That Nathan had taught him to see him as a friend and a doctor and a learned, cussedly stubborn, and sometimes holier-than-thou _man_ , not _black_ man, was a kindness that Ezra took to heart. Unfortunately, his pride in and respect for the man also caused him to take to heart the healer’s contempt of his lifestyle, his deep-seated belief that Ezra simply could not be trusted, however much they all might enjoy—and more, find convenient—having him around. He found the buzzing in his head growing, as the crowd below swelled.

Josiah’s words rang in his ears. “You blame your friends? Blame yourself!”

And he really had no one else to blame, did he? He was everything they thought he was: a swindler, a liar, a cheat when necessary. He had never actually been a thief before, though—there were easier ways of getting what you wanted, ways that were less likely to get you shot or hung.

But he was a con man. And what they all wanted… was a thief.

He’d tried to save himself one last time, going into that church. One word of comfort or understanding might have allowed him to continue the con he was running on himself and remain strong, rather than give in to the bigger con and fall to temptation. But he’d known it was a lost cause the moment Josiah had thrown the satchel at him and walked away with a finality that had, frankly, shaken Ezra more than the distrust of the entire group of them. He pulled a chair closer to the bed, spun his loaded pistol one more time… He should be looking for Stutz. That was what they all needed, after all.

But it wasn’t what they wanted.

God, he’d been played, hadn’t he? Played by fate—that most fickle of all lovers. He’d genuinely come to like these men, this town. Not three months here, he’d drawn a line with his own mother, tacitly declaring Four Corners off limits. His. And even… even when his mother had returned, intent on removing him, using his friends as the most cutting weapons to teach him the error of his ways, he hadn’t learned. He’d gone right back to protecting the town he fancied he belonged in.

He really was a fool of the highest order, wasn’t he?

No more, then. Time to end this con—get out while he could, under cover of the tumult below.

A part of him was surprised he didn’t slice himself to shreds along with the lining of his jacket. A part of him was already planning where to go first: the livery obviously, to get Chaucer and sneak out the back like the lowlife he was, but from there, perhaps Red River. Or to Hobbs, where he could take the Atlantic Pacific to St. Louis or Chicago or anywhere but here.

As he shoved the last of the money into his jacket, though, a part of him he hadn’t known existed, at least before a sardonic ass of a gunfighter had given him a second chance, looked out at him from the terrified green eyes in his mirror and asked, quietly, what _he_ wanted.

And he had so many answers he could barely breathe. He wanted to be trusted, to be useful, to be respected in ways he had never been—even by these six who called themselves his friends. He wanted to believe they _needed_ him, as a friend, a brother. He wanted an easy trust between him and them. He wanted _them_.

“This is the apple. Take a bite.”

He shoved the terrified image away, turning the mirror from him.

Fine. Fine. He’d always hoped his friends knew him better, and maybe they did. Maybe he was exactly what they said he was. And even if he wasn’t now, he might as well be.

Even after all he’d done—protecting the town, backing his friends, proving his worth, and surprising the hell out of himself with his actions—he knew he could cover them all, even bring Stutz down himself, and still not truly be trusted. He straightened his jacket, checking by touch that the fabric gave no indication of its expensive additions.

He might as well suffer the sin if he was to suffer the punishment. And Lord, but he was sick to death of the punishment.

Chaucer first, then. And perhaps straight out toward Santa Fe instead. They’d never expect that.

He left his rifle and everything else, armed only with one pistol and his Derringer. He could buy anything else he needed, after all, right? Or maybe only everything he wanted.

God, he didn’t want this, that was for certain. But his feet carried him along anyway, through the growing throng, across to the livery. He wondered if Vin was watching him from his perch. Was he on the Mercantile? The dry goods? Would he be wondering where Ezra was going, what he had seen? Whether he’d need to back his old friend the gambler?

Ezra’s shoulder hit a solid body and glanced away. Ingrained manners had him looking up into a face slightly off and heavily distracted. He walked on for five more steps before his mind processed the scar, the eye, the bulge that he’d hit when he banged against the man’s side.

Dear God!

He tried to remember, pulling on thirty-five years of practiced observation: short, brown bowler, houndstooth jacket—There!

He grabbed a man, spun him around, and nearly cursed when he found a man he vaguely recognized as a banker from Tall Butte, a nearby mining town. He looked around again, frantic until his eyes fell on Chris Larabee.

Ignoring the part of him that shouted for him to just cut his damn losses already and _go_ , Ezra rushed over to him.

“I saw Stutz in the crowd, he’s not going long range—we’ve gotta get the governor down!” No thoughts of money now, that part of him in the mirror whispered. This is what you _need_.

“It ain’t the governor he’s after, it’s Mary.”

Chris’s words froze something in him, and he looked around, terrified at what he wasn’t seeing. He’d lost Stutz. Jesus, how could he be so stupid? He barely heard Chris trying to drag Mary to cover as he scanned the crowd. Where the hell was he?

When Ezra saw him, saw the gun, he had one thought in his mind. Stop him. He was doing evil, and Ezra was the only one who saw him. He had no choice, really, did he?

His hand came up, with the idea of pushing the man’s shot into the air, and the shock of the bullet that ripped through his arm and then, confusingly, his side stunned him so badly for a moment, that he was certain it had killed him outright. It was only when he hit the ground, his body trying desperately to curl itself around the pain, that he realized he was alive.

Nathan suddenly slid to a stop beside him. “Just hold on, now Ezra,” he murmured, soft and controlled. He could be surprisingly comforting at times like these. “Let me see how bad you’re hurt here.”

Ezra tried to relax, tried to let Nathan work, but his body insisted it had to protect the wounds.

“Careful now,” Nathan told him, ignoring his movements and running a hand down his side.

A shot rang out—rifle shot, loud and long range, but not Vin’s rifle, which was confusing, because hadn’t Stutz just shot _him_ at close range?—and Ezra jerked at the sound, stifling a shriek at the pain. When a pistol fired a single shot shortly thereafter, Ezra’s head was almost too full of buzzing to notice.

“Lord, Ezra, that bullet did a number on you,” Nathan’s voice was saying, rising above the buzzing and pushing some of it aside. “Hit your arm first—you wiggle your fingers?”

“I would very much like not to, thank you,” he replied breathlessly, but sucked in air and did as he was told. His fingers curled obligingly as Mary Travis knelt before him. He truly wished the buzzing would stop.

“You saved my life,” she said gently, with the sound of a woman who certainly wasn’t expecting that from the likes of him.

Funny, neither was Ezra. “I did?” he asked, a bit stupidly, he supposed. When she nodded, he felt more confident. “I did.”

Chris was there now, and Ezra saw nothing but pride in the man’s face. “You done good, Ezra.”

Ezra smiled. Yes, sir. Nothing but pride—until Nathan extracted a wad of bloodied money. Hah, his mind conjured though his body hadn’t recovered enough from the shock to laugh, bloodied money, blood money… Fitting.

Fitting, too, to see the disappointed tightening of Chris’s lips, the surprise on Mary’s face.

“He’d be dead if it wasn’t for this.”

The lack of surprise on Nathan’s.

Well at least now he could be damned for a sin he’d committed. Nathan could patch him up and he could still leave. Not rich, but at least intact. Time to work the con. Just one more time.

“In the future, Mr. Larabee,” he drawled, gritting his teeth against the pain of the wounds and the words, “it might be best just not to… burden me, with other people’s money.”

And then a strange thing happened. Chris Larabee smiled a smile Ezra had seen him give Buck when the lothario missed his patrol because of a woman, a smile he’d seen him give Josiah after the preacher had again drunk himself into a rampage and come back out the other side chagrined and desperate to make amends.

A grin of absolution. A sign of Larabee’s acceptance of a man’s faults that Ezra could truthfully say he’d never seen directed at him.

Larabee holstered his gun and turned away, and the moment was gone. Before Ezra could try to contemplate it further, Vin raced up, a look on his face saying he feared the worst, and Ezra turned a no-doubt glassy grin on him as Nathan finished removing the money from his jacket. He really was beginning to feel most unwell…

“You all right, Ezra?” Vin asked, breathless and worried. Ezra noticed Stutz’s rifle in his friend’s hand. That explained the noise.

“He will be,” Nathan answered, though Ezra was quite capable of doing so himself. Regardless of the buzzing in his ears. “You help me get him up and into the clinic?”

Ezra braced himself for the move, but couldn’t stop the wave of sound and nausea that washed through him when they stood him up. It carried him off with it as handily as a summer undertow…

 

“…just gotta clean him up now, Vin,” Nathan was saying when the darkness cleared. “You get along back downstairs and don’t worry none. Looks like he’ll be fine, if we can keep all them holes clean.”

 _All them_ what _?_ Something wet and warm jarred his forearm and he groaned to keep from screaming.

“Hey Ezra,” Vin called quietly. “You back with us?”

Ezra pried his eyes open and looked up from his position on the bed in Nathan’s clinic. “May I assume I no longer sport lead within my person?” he asked weakly.

His wandering eyes found Nathan in time to see a reassuring grin. “Damn lucky, Ezra,” the man said, wringing out the bloodied cloth that had awakened Ezra in the first place. “By the time the bullet got through your arm and the money, weren’t enough punch left in it to kill you.” Strangely, there was no condemnation in his eyes when Nathan mentioned the money. Seemed to Ezra there should be.

“Didn’t look that way from where I was,” Vin muttered, dark and almost silent. “Felt a powerful need to take Stutz all the way down when I saw you fall. Guess I should be glad I didn’t do it.”

Ezra swallowed. He had no idea what had happened after he was shot, but he’d been certain Vin’s shot with Stutz, Sr.’s rifle must have flown true.

“Stutz is alive?” He didn’t know why that comforted him. A fleeting, reassuring thought that Stutz could now stand trial for his crimes was discarded as disturbingly out-of-character. Even moreso was the thought that Vin would never have forgiven himself for what he’d no doubt see as cold-blooded murder.

Vin’s jaw clenched hard. “Got him in the knee,” he answered softly. “Wanted to make sure he paid for what he done to you.”

There was a pain in Vin’s eyes so deep, Ezra swore he could see the shooting playing out there. He wasn’t surprised by the depth of feeling, just confused. His mind still churned with the thoughts that had led to his attempted departure, and he was having difficulty reconciling them with the reactions he’d seen so far from his friends.

“Didn’t matter none,” Vin ground on bitterly. “Governor’s lackey finished him off.”

At that, a number of things fell into place for Ezra, pushing all thoughts of his own personal demons forcefully to the side. “My God, the governor…”

Nathan looked at each of them in turn. “What?”

Vin didn’t seem to notice the question. “Chris and Buck seem to think so, too.”

“What?” Nathan repeated.

Ezra finally looked away from Vin to his confused friend. “Stutz wasn’t gunning for the governor. He was after Mary Travis.”

“Mrs. Travis!? What for?”

“Statehood would make it much harder for Hopewell to continue to… ‘prosper,’ shall we say.”

Vin nodded. “Looks like he took out a couple of other statehood advocates, too.” He shrugged. “Might’ve been more down the line, if Ezra hadn’t stopped him.”

Ezra looked up in shock. “We already knew it was Stutz, Vin,” he protested. “I did little more than run into the man—and his gun.” His part in this truly had been minimal—indeed, he’d only really succeeded in getting shot and living up to nearly everyone’s expectations by stealing the money.

But, dear Lord, what would have happened if he hadn’t run into Stutz?

“Don’t think Mary Travis sees it that way, Ezra,” Vin said quietly. He nodded to them both and picked up Stutz’s satchel from the dresser by the door. Ezra was surprised to find he hadn’t even noticed it there. “Hopewell’s clearing out—rat bastard.” He banged the satchel against the dresser top. “Reckon maybe we should give him back what’s his.”

A portion of Ezra’s mind stood amazed at his lack of avarice when gazing on that damned satchel now. Mostly what he felt was a bone-deep exhaustion. “I doubt he’ll be keen to take it, Mr. Tanner,” he whispered, lying back and closing his eyes.

He let the buzzing in his mind fuzz out Vin’s parting words. “Too damn bad, ‘cause I really want to jam it down his throat.”

The door closed softly on that pronouncement and Ezra jumped and hissed as the warm cloth again wiped down his forearm.

“Sorry, Ezra,” Nathan murmured. “Just want to clean this up some, then I’ll get you bandaged. Expect you’ll be running a fever by nightfall—money ain’t clean, you know?” He rambled on. “We’ll need to keep an eye on that arm, too. Don’t want you shuffling one-handed forever.”

Ezra opened his eyes and gazed at the neat little stitches in his forearm. His side was already bandaged, and he was vaguely pleased he’d been unconscious for that part. Nathan finished with the front of his arm and moved to wring out the cloth, a darkness in his eyes Ezra didn’t like. It made his chest hurt, which in turn annoyed him.

Damnit, why was this so difficult!? He’d realized in his room what he needed to do. He’d come to peace with the fact that, much as he _wanted_ to continue playing Lady Fate’s fool in Four Corners, he needed to simply cut himself loose. They didn’t trust him, much as they might miss him when he was gone…

Why couldn’t he just be content to _leave_?

“Nathan,” he whispered instead. “Are you all right?” He simply couldn’t not ask.

Large hands froze in the act of crushing moisture from the fabric. “Damnit, Ezra, I thought we’d lost you.” He took a deep breath, obviously trying to calm himself so that he could do his job. “God, the look on your face when Stutz spun you away from him…”

Ezra found himself shaking, finally feeling reaction set in. “I apologize for the scare,” he replied shakily. “It was hardly my intention to become Stutz’s latest victim.”

“You’re full of shit, Ezra,” Nathan responded with a laugh. “Hell, maybe we all are.”

Ezra didn’t even try to respond. He felt on the brink of… something. _I had always hoped my friends knew me better…_

“You’d’ve died happy if that’s what it took to stop that bastard,” Nathan said, the conviction in his voice ringing through Ezra and causing him to shiver.

“I believe you have me confused with more noble of our brethren,” he said, damning himself for his not-quite-steady delivery. “You are aware of what I carried at the time?”

“Not sure that was all your fault, Ezra,” Nathan said, resuming his ministrations. “Guess people have a way of living down to expectation, don’t they?” His direct gaze compelled Ezra to meet his eyes. “Seems to me you could’ve just kept going,. Would’ve been easy to disappear in the chaos.” He nodded to himself, as if settling something important in his own mind. “Could’ve tried to shoot Stutz through the crowd, too. You didn’t have to walk right up to him.”

This was really going too far. He wasn’t a saint, for God’s sake! “I could hardly fire into a crowd of innocent people! I simply acted on instinct—“

“That’s right,” Nathan interrupted. “That’s right.” He started winding a bandage around Ezra’s arm. “Only a good man’s instinct tells him to rush at a gun aimed at another person.” He tied off the bandage and again looked Ezra in the eyes.

“I’m sorry, Ezra,” he said, so simple and heartfelt that Ezra felt something uncoil in his chest for the first time since he and Chris and Vin had found Stutz, Sr. dead in his hotel room. “I know we don’t see eye to eye sometimes, and I know I give you a harder time than most, but…” He took such a reluctant deep breath that Ezra had to fight not to chuckle at how hard this was for Nathan to say. “I shouldn’t’ve said what I said to you. About the money, about trusting you. None of it. It weren’t right.”

Ezra tried to come up with an answer to that, but he found himself strangely frozen.

_One word of comfort or understanding…_

Nathan gave him a friendly slap on the leg as he slipped a sling over the bandaged arm. “Come on—I want to see if Chris actually shoots the damn governor.”

Ezra pushed himself tiredly to his feet, already beginning to feel as if walking might be beyond him quite quickly. But there was a lightness in his soul now, and when Chris Larabee looked up at him on the balcony, concerned, wanting only to know how his friend was feeling, it was surprising easy to answer truthfully.

“Right as rain.”

And equally easy to continue to play his part for Lady Fate. “By the way, Mr. Larabee—what are we doing with the money?”

They wanted Ezra Standish, after all, and Ezra was a fine enough con man to give that to them.

<p align=center>* * *<br>The End


End file.
